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I Insert Myself Into Celebrities’ Instagram Photos

My name is Jon Burgerman and I am an artist from the UK who lives in New York. I like seeing cool stuff on Instagram, but equally feel sad, bereft and lonely when I see that whilst I’m on the toilet, in the dark with no toilet paper left, a bunch of people are out partying, enjoying their exciting lives. Rather than becoming more outgoing I thought to remedy this self-pitying low I would simply insert myself into celebrities Instagram photos. A quick Insta-fix for the Insta-generation.

I hoped that the images would be funny and playful with a little serious side to it as well. As much as I’m making broad visual gags with crude collage techniques I wondered why we perform across social media to present a heightened version of our lives. Of course, it’s fun but sometimes we use it as a means to compare ourselves with others and then feel bad about it, and that’s certainly a lot less fun.

The rules I gave myself for my project “Jon’s Famous Friends”, or JFF for short, were simple. Firstly, I would only use photos uploaded to Instragram by the celebrities themselves onto their own accounts. Secondly, I would collage myself into the photos by using a simple straight cut across the sampled image. Finally, I would make sure none of this would take a lot of time. I am lazy and easily distracted.

Jon Burgerman is an award winning British artist currently residing in New York. Unbound by any particular medium his work adapts to and experiments across a variety of platforms including painting, murals, apparel and performance.

Okay, so obviously the pictures are hilarious, but the entire other message is really great, too. At first I was like, "Oh so he's an introvert who seems to be lonely" and then I was like, "Oh so he's going all deep with this, awesome! And I guess he's not lonely, he's just bored...?" lol

Okay, so obviously the pictures are hilarious, but the entire other message is really great, too. At first I was like, "Oh so he's an introvert who seems to be lonely" and then I was like, "Oh so he's going all deep with this, awesome! And I guess he's not lonely, he's just bored...?" lol